


Unwritten Rules

by lyra_wing



Category: Almost Human
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-19
Updated: 2013-11-19
Packaged: 2018-01-02 01:34:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,746
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1050979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyra_wing/pseuds/lyra_wing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Domesticity for robots.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Unwritten Rules

**Author's Note:**

> Seeing as how I'm writing this fic when we're only 2 episodes into the series, I fully expect to be Jossed within an inch of my life. But I don't care! Shiny new fandom! Muahaha.

Night was falling and the city lights were streaming past in streaks of white and blue and ruby red as John sped the car through the narrow streets. Dorian was silent beside him, looking out the window. 

They had just left the backup server storage facilities for the precinct—located offsite in a temperature-controlled warehouse—and had come to another dead end in their search for Vogel’s missing case file. It was the end of the day, and John had just started driving towards the station, assuming that was where he should drop off Dorian, but it occurred to him that he didn’t even know— “Uh, so… where to?” 

Dorian turned to look at him and quirked up one side of his mouth, amused. “Are you asking me, your place or mine?” 

John spluttered, “I—what?” 

“Sorry, that was inappropriate. My humor protocol overrode my appropriate workplace conversation and sexual harassment sub-routines.” But Dorian was still smiling. 

“You do not have a sexual harassment sub-routine.” And what the hell did that mean if he—Christ, John was already thinking of the DRN as “he”—did? 

“You’ll only ever know if it malfunctions.” Okay, now Dorian was outright grinning. 

John felt weirdly embarrassed by this whole unexpected turn of the conversation and, seriously, what the hell? John thought maybe he was beginning to understand why all the DRNs had been decommissioned. 

“What I meant was, where do I take you? Where do you, I don’t know, recharge or power down or plug in or whatever it is that you—” John was about to say “synthetics” but he caught himself, “—all do?” 

If Dorian noticed the pause, he didn’t say anything about it. “I don’t need to recharge; my systems can run on solar energy. But there’s the MX facility under the station for MXs to enter sleep mode while they’re not on active duty. There are charging pods down there for a quicker boost. I go there at night.” 

“A-ah.” It made sense, but it sounded extremely weird to John, as all this synthetic business always did. “So back to the station?” 

“Back to the station. Unless you want to take me back so I can keep running my scans on the backup server files. I can do that all night, and be done with the entire server before morning.” Dorian sounded completely fine with doing what John imagined to be a mind-numbing task, even for an android. 

But it hardly seemed fair to leave Dorian to spend the night in the bowels of a computer server facility while John went home to eat dinner and go to sleep, although John could not really explain why. 

“Didn’t you run scans on all the files dating from now back to when Vogel started with the precinct? I think we’ve gotten as far as we care to go there.” 

“Happy to do it.” And again, Dorian really sounded like he was. He was strangely eager to do what he could. Whether it was because Dorian really did love being a cop, right down to the paperwork, or because he was trying to prove himself capable, John wasn’t sure. John was still wrapping his head around the idea that Dorian had emotions and desires at all. 

“Just… go do your recharge thing.” John swung the car around, coasting to a stop in front of the station. “I’ll see you in the morning.” 

Dorian popped the passenger door open and got out. He closed the door and leaned in a little through the rolled-down window. “Night, John,” he said, breaking out in a smile as he said John’s name, clearly pleased. 

John rolled his eyes and put his car into gear, roaring away into the night without replying. 

*** 

John entered his apartment with a grunt, as the synapses in his synthetic leg went briefly haywire just as he crossed the threshold. He closed the front door by leaning back heavily on it. He stayed there for a second, staring up at the bare white ceiling, which looked grimly gray in the dark. 

He waited for the spasm to pass, watching the erratic pulse of lights glowing under the fabric of his pants leg. 

After a moment, he pushed off the door and made his way to his bedroom, grimacing and swearing all the way, as the movement seemed to trigger aftershocks of pain. He finally heaved himself onto his bed, flopping tiredly backwards onto it, sweating and panting. 

John glanced at the clock on his bedside table. It was one in the morning. Beside the clock was a digital photo frame, cycling through photos of him and Anna. At the beach, at a friend’s wedding, at a concert, him clean-shaven and smiling, her bright-eyed and laughing. 

With the last bit of energy he had, John smacked the photo frame and sent it flying across the room. It crashed against the wall and cracked, sparking a little bit before the display died out. 

John closed his eyes and wished he could go back in time, back to the blankness of not remembering, back to the simplicity of ignorance. 

*** 

The thing about waking up from a coma—although John suspected this was unique to his own situation—was that he had no time to get used to the fact that all the important people in his life were gone. 

Sometimes he would think of something to tell Anna or Pelham, and he’d actually reach for his phone to send one of them a message, before he remembered. Sometimes he would wake up in the morning and roll over, half-asleep, expecting to find Anna beside him. But there was no one there. 

One morning, John drove past a pile of burned-out rubble, still smoking, and he did a double-take, looking over his left shoulder back at the ruined structure. “Would you look at that? That was a restaurant, wasn’t it? Remember when we took…” 

But Pelham wasn’t sitting in the passenger seat. He turned around and saw Dorian watching him curiously with his mild blue-gray gaze. 

“Remember when we what?” asked Dorian. 

“Um. Never mind.” John blinked, refocusing on the road. It was a little disconcerting for a second, like past and present were blurring together in a weird way. But it wasn’t like Dorian was anything like Pelham at all, so John didn’t really know what he was thinking. 

And because Dorian didn’t know how to let an awkward conversation end, after a moment, he said, “I’m not trying to replace him. Pelham.” 

Of course, Dorian would just dig right into the heart of the matter. 

John coasted to a stop at a light and stared out the driver’s side window. “I know that.” 

“I know you miss him.” Someone needed to go back in time and tell Dorian’s programmers that cops did not like to have conversations about their feelings. Dorian was watching him; John could see it out of the corner of his eye. “It’s hard to adjust to a new partner, I understand.” 

A few minutes ticked by in complete silence because John really didn’t have an anything to say to that. 

He glanced over at Dorian, who was now looking out his own window. The android had an exceedingly _kind_ face, a window to the so-called bleeding heart inside, and his cool eyes reflected the color of the sky. John had been working with Dorian for barely two weeks, but it felt like he had known the android for a long time. 

“Actually, I don’t think that’s the problem,” muttered John, and gunned the car the rest of the way to the station, ignoring Dorian’s questioning gaze. 

*** 

“When will kids learn the cost-benefit balance is vastly out of their favor with these new synthetic drugs?” John shut the last of the bricks of a glimmering white-gold powder into the evidence locker. He may have slammed the locker shut with a little more force than necessary, but to Dorian’s credit, he didn’t even quirk an eyebrow. 

“It’s the idiocy that comes with being young. Feeling like you have to try everything at least once in your life.” 

John leveled a look at his partner that he hoped conveyed what utter bullcrap he thought that sentiment was. 

Dorian grinned at him. “Hey, I don’t like drugs that melt adolescent brains any more than you do. I’m just saying, I understand where they’re coming from.” 

They left the evidence storage room and took a turn, taking a shortcut through a side hallway of the basement to head back upstairs. 

“If this segues into another one of your touchy-feely…” John trailed off. 

They were standing in front of the double glass doors leading into the MX facility. And while John always knew this place existed, he never had reason to come down here before. It was dark inside, mostly, except for the blinking of blue and red lights on the charging pods, which were laid out in rows along the walls of the room, like dorm room beds. The space was spare and neat, clinical in its cleanliness. It was like a hospital room—a creepy and dark hospital room straight out of a horror movie. To add to the creepiness, some MXs were merely standing idle, eyes blank or eyes shut, unseeing, like those old-fashioned shop mannequins. 

John found his voice again. “You stay in there?” 

Dorian glanced at him. There was a wry twist to his mouth when he said, “Yep. Home sweet home.” 

The MXs, which were basically walking and talking pieces of furniture, seemed to be perfectly at home here. And the space suited them. But not Dorian. He seemed too _alive_ to be stuck in this basement of half-dead things. 

Before John realized he had even opened his mouth, he found himself saying, “Pack your bags.” 

“What?” 

“Or your batteries, or whatever. You’re coming with me.” John scowled as Dorian continued to stare at him. “Don’t make me ask twice.” 

“Technically, you didn’t even ask once. You voiced it in the imperative.” At John’s look, Dorian held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay, no grammar corrections. I know people hate that. But… for real? You’re serious about this?” 

There was a hopeful look in Dorian’s eyes—it was there for barely a second and gone again in a blink—that John didn’t want to think about too closely. 

“Trial run only,” he snapped. “Deal?” 

“Trial run,” agreed Dorian. “Deal. And… thanks, man.” He didn’t exactly smile, but his gaze was warm, and when the hell did robotic eyes become so expressive? 

“Just… c’mon. I don’t have all day,” said John gruffly. He turned on his heel and went upstairs, glad to leave the MX facility behind. 

*** 

In the end, it wasn’t that big of a deal, and it was easier in many respects than moving in a person. Dorian had two sets of clothing and that was about it. The chief initialed off John’s requisition form for a charging pod to be delivered to his apartment, without even calling him up to harass him or say “I told you so.” Although she did give him an amused look the next time he passed by her office. 

“Hey, watch the furniture!” John rescued his coffee table from being scraped by the movers as they maneuvered the pod through his apartment, pushing the table out of the way at the last second. 

The movers put the pod in the study. John never used that room anyway—it had been more of Anna’s space—and the pod slid into place next to the desk like it was supposed to have been there all along. 

“If that’s all, Detective, we’ll be seeing ya,” said one of the movers, Kurt. 

Kurt worked down in evidence storage at the station. In his line of work, Kurt probably moved a lot of weirder things into even weirder locations, but he still gave both John and Dorian a sidelong glance on his way out the door. 

“This is going to be all over the precinct by tomorrow morning,” said John with a sigh. He sat down heavily on his couch and rubbed a hand over his face. 

Dorian was standing in the kitchen and frowning at the closed front door. “I don’t like that guy.” 

“Who, Kurt?” John lifted his head. “So you’re telling me you’re capable of disliking someone? You don’t want to hold hands with everyone and sing ‘We are the World’?” 

“If I am capable of liking things, it stands to reason that I am capable of disliking things, too.” Dorian sat down next to John. He raised a hand, index finger extended, and the TV display activated. 

“Don’t get me wrong, I’m thrilled. It makes you far less annoying.” John frowned and switched the channel from the news to boxing—he had recorded a fight from last week—with a wave of his hand. 

Dorian made a face. “I don’t like boxing.” He flipped the channel again, this time to a cooking channel. 

John tried to change it back, but nothing happened, and he realized the bastard had locked it somehow. “I take it back, it makes you more annoying, not less.” 

Dorian grinned but didn’t turn to look at him, absorbed by the TV program, watching it with his complete attention. 

*** 

“What’s a kiss like?” 

John nearly crashed the car. As it was, he jumped the median briefly and narrowly avoided swerving into the traffic lanes going in the opposite direction. When they were back on even ground and John’s heart rate went somewhat back to normal, he said, “What?” 

“People do that a lot on TV. Kissing.” Dorian’s expression was completely neutral, showing no emotion at all, despite their narrow escape from a fiery metal-grinding death. 

John resisted the urge to smash his head against the steering wheel. “Oh god, can you be any more of an android cliché? Learn about it from the Internet like any other teenage boy.” 

“Watching it isn’t the same as doing it.” Dorian pressed his fingertips to his mouth, and he really didn’t have any idea how that gesture looked, and John was certainly was not going to tell him. “I don’t have sensors here, so I guess it wouldn’t feel like much to me.” 

“It’s less about the feeling and more about the connection.” John found himself engaging in this totally off-the-wall topic of conversation even though he had no intention of doing so. This phenomenon seemed to happen a lot around Dorian. 

“Ah.” Dorian was still touching his mouth. “You know, I do have a core body temperature. It’s lower than a human’s. But the warmest part of me is my mouth, specifically my tongue. I wonder why that is—I don’t think there’s a reason for it.” 

“Please stop talking.” John pressed his face against the driver side window. It was cool against his warm cheek. His pulse was pounding around in places he _really_ didn’t want to think about, especially when his partner could perform a full-body scan on him and see… everything. “Whatever happened to that sexual harassment sub-routine?” 

“Who was talking about sex?” Dorian looked at him blankly. 

John really did bang his head against the steering wheel then. 

*** 

John entered his apartment, and nearly brained himself against the wall as he tripped over several boxes in the hall. There were boxes everywhere—John recognized them as his storage containers for his hall closet—and all the kitchen cabinets were open, and pots and pans were left scattered on the counter. For some reason, even the couch had been taken apart, the cushions and pillows strewn all over the living room floor. 

“Dorian?” For a second, John thought his apartment had been broken into. He unholstered his gun. “Dorian!” 

Dorian popped his head of out the study. “Oh hey, you’re back. How was your run?” 

“‘ _Oh hey_ ’?” John repeated. He gestured at the mess, vaguely aware he was doing his gesturing with his gun but not really caring. “What the hell?” 

“Oh, yeah, that.” Dorian replaced some of the cushions—although not all of them—and sat down on the couch. He activated the TV. “Sorry about that. I guess I didn’t really notice?” 

“This is impossible, how are you messy? How can an android be messy?” John holstered his gun. “You don’t eat, you don’t have any bodily functions, and as far as I’m aware, you have exactly two sets of clothing, issued by the police department, and _yet_ —” 

“Hm?” said Dorian absently, and his eyes didn’t leave the TV display. “Oh, alright. I’ll clean it up. Do you have a date coming over tonight?” 

“No,” said John, although he had no idea why he was even bothering to answer the question. “And what does that have to do anything?” 

“Dinner guests?” 

“No,” said John, scowling, seeing where this was heading. 

“The chief stopping by?” 

“No,” said John through gritted teeth. 

Dorian finally turned away from the TV and looked up at John with a broad smile. “So I don’t really need to clean it up then, right? I mean, I don’t mind the mess.” 

“ _I_ mind the mess.” 

“Logically, the one who minds the mess is the one who has the motivation to do something about it, not the one who doesn’t.” 

“How— _how_ is that logical? Is your CPU on the fritz?” 

Dorian flipped the TV off. He stood up and clapped John on the shoulder, still smiling wide. “Alright, I’ll clean it up,” he said. “I don’t like to see you upset.” 

“Thank you.” John wasn’t certain how he felt about that last sentence, but at least Dorian was now tidying up the living room. “What were you doing, anyway? In the kitchen.” 

“I was looking for your stand mixer.” Dorian said this like it was the most obvious thing in the world. 

“I don’t _own_ a stand mixer. Dare I ask why you were looking for one?” 

Dorian began putting away the contents of the kitchen cabinets. His movements were graceful and methodical, but did not have the kind of regimented mechanical precision that John was used to seeing from the MXs. “There was a video on how to bake a cake. I wanted to try it.” 

“Well, of course. I should’ve realized.” John sat down at the kitchen counter. 

“Don’t worry, I ordered a mixer online.” John stared at him, and Dorian smirked. “You really shouldn’t autosave your credit card number on your online accounts.” 

John rubbed at his temples, trying to avert the headache he could feel coming on. 

“Oh, but you know what I did make? I made lasagna.” Dorian had put everything away by this point. Now he bent down and opened the oven, and pulled out a pan of lasagna, still faintly steaming. As soon as the oven door opened, the warm basil and tomato smell of the food hit John’s nose. “Do you want to try some? I have no idea how it tastes, but I think it looks okay.” 

“Sure.” John reached over to the dish rack and grabbed a fork. “Why the hell not.” 

The lasagna was goddamn delicious, but John didn’t tell Dorian that. He suspected Dorian already knew it was delicious, because he was watching John eat with a somewhat smug look on his face, and John wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction. 

*** 

They had been rooming together for about a month now, and John had learned to expect the unexpected more often than not when he opened his apartment door. But Dorian still managed to surprise him. 

John had been out picking up some groceries, and he came back to an empty apartment. 

After that first time, Dorian made a point of keeping the apartment fairly neat—except for the study, which was basically a disaster area. John had given up on that room as a lost cause, and left Dorian to his own devices in there. Never let it be said that John couldn’t compromise. 

He peeked into the study. “Dorian?” The charging pod was off and Dorian was nowhere to be seen. 

“Hey! In here.” Dorian’s voice called from the bathroom. 

John went to the other side of the apartment and opened the bathroom door. 

That was a mistake. 

Dorian was standing in the middle of the bathroom, which was full of cloudy white steam. The steam unfortunately did not obscure the fact that Dorian was completely naked. And dripping wet. 

“Wh—what the hell are you doing?!” John held a hand up to block his view. 

“Showering? Or, I was. And I thought the social convention was to knock on occupied bathroom doors.” 

John’s hand could only block out so much. He shut his eyes. “Put on some damn clothes!” 

At least that answered the question of whether DRNs were anatomically correct. Of course his traitorous gaze had immediately gone south during the approximately 0.2 seconds that he was looking at Dorian, and John knew it was an image he would never be able to unsee—it felt like it was burned into the back of his brain. 

“Are you embarrassed?” asked Dorian, and there was a grin in his voice. There was a rustle of clothing—the slight noise made the tips of John’s ears go hot. 

“No!” 

“Elevated heart rate and temperature would say otherwise,” said Dorian, and he clearly was having a field day with this. 

“Since when do androids shower? Won’t you… rust, or electrocute yourself, or something?” John had screwed his eyes shut and was resolutely _not looking_. 

“I’ve got a silicone epidermal coating. It gets dirty like anyone else’s skin does. Alright, I’m decent.” John opened his eyes and found Dorian clothed and looking back at him, smiling. “Although, to be honest, the pod has a cleanser built in, so I technically don’t have to shower if I don’t want to.” 

“So why do you?” 

“Because I want to,” said Dorian, looking at him plainly, voice low, and the way he said it made John’s stomach flip over, like a falling down a drop on a roller coaster. 

*** 

John woke up with a hand on his shoulder. The touch was cool through the fabric of his dress shirt. He lifted his head blearily and saw Dorian looking down at him. The apartment lights were on low, and outside, the sky was black and starless. He had fallen asleep writing his last report for the day. 

“You should get to bed. Sleeping in that position is bad for your back.” 

“I’ve got to…” John squinted at his datapad. 

Dorian reached over his shoulder, saving the file and flicking the datapad off. “Tomorrow. C’mon, don’t make me carry you, because you know I will, and that’ll just be awkward for everyone involved.” 

John got up and his synthetic leg shrieked a shrill warning before it gave out on him. He fell forward with a grunt, and Dorian caught him. 

“So much for saving my dignity.” John grimaced and straightened up with Dorian’s help. 

Dorian wrapped one of John’s arms around his neck as he helped John hobble into the bedroom. “You can only save something that you already have,” he said with a grin. 

“Har har.” John’s leg screamed in pain as he settled down on his bed. He screwed his eyes shut and he let out a hiss between his teeth, waiting for the spasm to pass. 

Once John could open his eyes again, he saw Dorian leaning over the bed, watching him closely. “Are you okay? Do you need anything?” 

“Fine.” John wanted to look away from Dorian’s perceptive gaze, but he couldn’t. He tried to make a joke of it, and smile. “There’s no cure for self-pity yet.” 

A slight frown tugged at Dorian’s features. “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” he said. “You’ve been through a lot in a pretty short period of time.” 

“And…?” John was waiting for the jab or joke. 

Dorian blinked at him, and his mouth turned into a rueful smile. “And nothing. That’s all,” he said. “I care about you, you know that, right?” 

“Someone really needs to explain to you the first unwritten rule of law enforcement is that we don’t share our feel—” John swallowed the last of the sentence when Dorian leaned down and kissed him. 

Softly and very gently, and Dorian was right, compared to John’s mouth, Dorian’s lips felt cool and smooth. It was actually a pleasant contrast, like the feeling of laying your head down on a cool pillow. After the first tentative brush, Dorian pressed in harder, touching the tip of his warm tongue against John’s lips, and John gasped into Dorian’s mouth, flushing hotly all over. 

Dorian leaned back. He was watching John carefully, and the blue lights of his processor were active on his cheek, and he was actually analyzing John’s reaction. “Was that okay?” he asked. 

“Can’t you tell already?” John cocked an eyebrow, casting a significant look at the processor lights. 

Dorian smiled, before leaning in again. “The polite thing to do is ask beforehand. But I wanted to, very badly, and I didn’t want you to say no.” He was sitting on the edge of the bed and his mouth was barely brushing John’s; there was just a cool tickle of his lips as he spoke, murmuring, “Can I kiss you again?” 

“Christ,” said John, his breath going stuttery in his throat, and Dorian must’ve understood that was a "yes," because he was kissing John once more, pressing in with his smooth lips and warm tongue. 

“Oh, you’re aroused,” said Dorian, mumbling against John’s mouth. His hand was stroking up John’s thigh, over the fabric of his pants. The cool touch skated across John’s erection, and John grunted, hips jerking up involuntarily. Dorian broke off the kiss, moving his mouth to John’s throat, kissing at the pulse line there. His hand deftly opened the front of John’s pants and reached in, stroking John’s cock in his sure, unyielding grip, and John swore. 

“I want to see you orgasm,” said Dorian against his throat, and John was panting crazily, loud to his own ears, staring up at the ceiling without really seeing anything. “What do you want me to do?” 

John tugged at the sleeve of Dorian’s shirt, which was about as much communication John could accomplish at the moment. Dorian seemed to understand, and he reared back to pull off his shirt before crawling back in place on top of John’s body. He pressed John down into the mattress, his skin cool and soft, kissing John’s mouth deeply and jerking him off in rhythm with his kisses. 

John had to break away eventually because he had to breathe. Or, more accurately, gasp. “You’re scarily good at this.” 

“Internet.” Dorian grinned at him, which was so infuriating and so _him_ that John growled and tugged him back down, kissing him again. 

The whole time, Dorian had been persistently pulling at John’s cock with a steady, even stroke, thumb rubbing at the head with every downstroke. He quickened his pace, saying against John’s mouth, “What do you want? My hand? Or my mouth? I could suck you—” 

“Jesus fucking Christ.” John moaned and came in a rush, splattering on Dorian’s hand, his shirt, the sheets. He trembled, his hips helplessly fucking into Dorian’s fist as Dorian pulled him through the aftershocks. When they finally subsided, John threw an arm over his eyes. “God.” 

“Okay, that became a moot point, I suppose,” said Dorian, grin in his voice, and John blindly found a pillow and whapped him in the face with it. 

*** 

A little bit later, Dorian shifted, starting to get up. “You really should get some sleep,” he said when John lifted his head to look at him. 

John reached out and caught Dorian’s wrist. “Stay here for a little bit.” 

“And do what?” asked Dorian, favoring John with a wry look. 

“I don’t know, solve the mysteries of the universe, watch my handsome mug while I sleep.” John rolled over. He smiled a little when he felt Dorian settle in behind him. He thought Dorian was probably just going to lay there for the rest of the night, but he was surprised when, after a moment, Dorian turned and wrapped an arm around John's waist, pulling him back a little and holding him against his chest. 

“Can I do this?” Dorian asked. 

“Yeah.” John closed his eyes. “Yeah, that’s fine.” 

~fin~


End file.
